Making the administrative records of HIAS available to the public

About

“Welcome the stranger. Protect the refugee.”

HIAS began over 130 years ago as an organization dedicated to provide relocation assistance to persecuted Jews around the world. The organization’s mission now includes administering assistance to refugees and immigrants of ALL backgrounds by reuniting families and offering resettlement services through cultural and governmental advocacy.

In addition to physical paper processing, this project will also provide limited digital access to hundreds of HIAS client files and digital images of registration cards. An extended arm of this project also includes metadata creation and online access of thousands of digital photographs of HIAS events, promotional material, documents, and board members.

OnTheRescueFrontencompasses many of the interesting HIAS correspondence, images, and ephemera uncovered by AJHS archivists during their daily processing. Please join us here throughout 2018 as we continue to uncover more unique items and histories from HIAS’ proud profession of helping those in need.

Do you have a personal immigration/relocation story that relates to some of our posts?
Do you have any questions for the AJHS Archivists or about the project itself?

Please feel free to comment!

Care to learn more? Please visit our project homepage!

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2 thoughts on “About”

My grandfather, the late Hon. Murray I Gurfein was active in HIAS, serving as vice oresident and president during the 1850’s and 1960’s. There was a piece in the blog about him.
For the last several years I have been researching his life. I have obtained some documents relating to his HIAS work. I would be very interested in learning more about this project.